Where Souls Do Couch On Flowers
by Fidelis Haven
Summary: A companion piece to The Serpentine Chain: October 1943 - Octavius Malfoy considers the colour white, his lover, death and the 16 year old Heir of Slytherin.


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Author's Note: This story is a companion piece to The Serpentine Chain, and unless you've read that first, this will mean very little to you. It's set mainly between chapters nine and ten of TSC, but there are flashbacks. With the exception of Riddle, the rest of the characters are mine. Riddle, and the Potterverse, belong to JK Rowling.

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Acknowledgements: The title is taken from _Antony and Cleopatra, _and there are a number of quotes from Shakespeare throughout. A Robert Frost poem's quoted, too. There's a sneaky Cradle of Filth reference, too, and connoisseurs may notice the ever-so-subtle references to Drusilla and Constance Hardbroom. This is dedicated to Faith (because she Got Old) Minerva McTabby (for filling me with the urge to slash Octavius with Gesius Lott) and the other Dark Teapot members, naturally. 

Where Souls Do Couch On Flowers

__

October18th 1943

White, Octavius had been told, was the presence of all colour. The sum of all visual experience, the colour of light. True light, at its most searing, most unforgiving. Most deadly. White encompasses everything, and knowing this, Octavius couldn't help but wonder at those who would associate it with innocence. He had found that knowledge and innocence do not walk hand in hand – experience is the great stumbling block on the road to purity and its colour is also white. The end of innocence, and perhaps this was why the Chinese traditionally viewed white, not black, as the colour of death, mourning, grief. Black was simply what remained for the living whilst the dead in their white shrouds are lowered into the grave. Black was the colour of consolation – white was not so forgiving. Snow hid the dirt, snow did not erase it. And ice killed.

__

She had always loved white. She had white rose petals scattered in her room, upon the bed, upon the painted wood of her dressing table. Her fascination for the colour has grown, not diminished, in the long time they've known each other. She was not an innocent, and hasn't been since she came willingly to his bed one hot, sultry June night, years ago. She'd been fourteen; he sixteen and he'd never been in the habit of turning people away. She was already fully aware of what she was, what she could do to him with the lightest touch of her fingertips. She remained, despite their years apart and his many infidelities, the only woman to whom he ever returns. The roses looked romantic, scattered as they were. A careful illusion on her part. She wasn't the romantic type. But she knew him very well. Despite everything.

She lay on her bed of rose petal white, her hair unbound and glistening in the candlelight. Her cheeks, her skin, even her lips, were all as pale as the sheets that are artfully twisted around her, subtly, artistically and very deliberately emphasizing her curves. The purity of death was in her winding sheets, and she walked very close to that final surrender every time she dreamed. She Saw her father's death before it came to pass, and did not speak, and this remoteness of hers, this devotion to Fate only made her more desirable. Perhaps her fascination with the colour of light was simply a desire for visions, sex, fulfillment, even death, on her part.

As he looked at her closed eyes, her ashen cheeks, her chest that barely rises as she breathes – _does she breathe_? – he felt a chill certainty dawning within him, a knowledge that he had tried to suppress for far too long. 

He'd always told himself that he will be the first to die – he'd had several close shaves on the Continent. There are countless people with whom he has unfinished business. The clash over Constance, with Seraphim, for example, and several other vicious exchanges since had indicated as much. Octavius had done well in Siberia – too well, perhaps, because in bending desire to fit his own purposes, he'd done more than wound Seraphim's pride. The look in the Head of Gryffindor's eyes when they'd separated, back in 1933, had told Octavius that he'd actually _hurt_ the man. Things had definitely been interesting once he took up his post at Hogwarts. _There is nothing more ridiculous_, Octavius had thought at the time, coolly amused, _than the emotions of people you never cared about in the first place_. Of course, Seraphim had been too ashamed to act – but if pushed too far, as was increasingly likely, he would snap. And then there was the boy, the Heir. Dreamed into being by Elspeth two years before his birth. Octavius' role as mentor to the boy is not without risk, but he had no choice in this matter. Blood is binding. Elspeth, on the other hand – 

__

Seers are not long lived. And Elspeth Haven was already thirty-three.

She lived on borrowed time – her spider tattoo was enough to tell him that. Yet, just as she had never asked him for the details of what, exactly, he'd done abroad, just as she'd never asked him to explain in detail what he was teaching the sixteen year old Riddle, just as she never questioned the accepted view of last year's events – he had never asked her to explain the deeper mysteries of the Sight, the full implications of her tattoo – and he never asked her just what it was she did to delay the inevitable. He knew that female Seers worked closely with blood, he knew from firsthand experience that blood magic was the most potent of all – and then he remembered her stay in Cséjthe, years ago, and wondered just what, exactly, she learned from the Bathorys – but he had never asked her just how it was that she was still alive. Some might have found it surprising, ridiculously so, that he'd never spoken to her about this – but Elspeth and he had tacitly agreed never to touch upon certain matters. And, if Octavius was completely honest with himself – he simply didn't want to think about it, this aspect of her life, her death. _Very much the coward where some things are concerned_, he thought without bitterness, realizing that she knew that. He has always thought of himself as the strong one, perhaps because of her Sight-induced physical weakness, perhaps because he found it strangely romantic to picture her as the invalid in her white rose-filled room, and himself as the knight-errant. The wanderer. He found it disquieting, this realization that she was, in fact, the stronger of the two.

She wasn't the romantic type. But she knew him very well. In spite of everything.

That bed could be her death bed. Her love for white mere acceptance of her own fate. _She was born in a burial gown_, he thought, ruthlessly smothering the not-quite-fury that threatened to overwhelm him at the thought of her death. _She's been living for death since the very beginning._

The beginning, for them, had been the tenth of June 1925. The weather almost unnaturally hot, the air charged with electrifying tension that broke a few days later in a violent storm – and very close to the end of his fifth year it had been. He'd sat his last OWL exam that morning, and then in the evening she'd come to him. Quietly self assured, and possessed with a preternatural calm that he'd admired rather more than he cared to admit. And he'd found the level of expertise with which she'd kissed him surprising, hinting at greater depths of experience than was usual for a girl of fourteen. (Octavius' experience in that area was already considerable, of course. But then, Styliane Zalaras, in a painfully desperate attempt to exert some form of _control_ over herself, over her life, had taught him the first lessons in desire three years earlier. Never what Octavius would have termed _strong_, her decline had begun shortly after her father's death. To be halted for a while, perhaps, by the attentions of the thirteen-year old Octavius, but there was only so much he could do for her, and when she'd left Hogwarts, she left the wizarding world, everything that might have helped her, far behind.)

Elspeth, then, had been a pleasant surprise. He'd known her only slightly before he'd slept with her – she had been in the year below him, but Slytherin, of course. She'd become notorious amongst the lower years since she'd had an extremely violent vision during a late night drinking session in the Slytherin common room. Octavius, who'd been there and had heard everything, was fairly sure that only _he_ knew the significance of what she'd said – after all, Styliane's heritage was _not_ common knowledge, and Elspeth had named no names – but the incident had meant that her reputation amongst the younger, more impressionable Slytherins had been pretty much exalted. She'd developed quite a following of enraptured first years, at least for a while. She had, however, managed to maintain her distance from what Octavius scornfully deemed the _common herd, _and for that reason alone she'd earned his respect. Unlike the intolerable Lockhart, she kept herself aloof, almost isolated. As Octavius later learned, this was essential for her, this distancing – the Sight was hereditary in her family, and so she'd started visioning much earlier than most Seers – remoteness was necessary in order to preserve her own sense of self. So she said, but she'd never been distant with him – except when it suited her own desires. Which, in turn, fed his. She knew what she could do to him, after all.

She _had_ been a virgin until that night, though, and there'd been unassailable proof. _Blood will tell, indeed_, he'd thought afterwards. An interesting contradiction, then, between that and the obvious knowledge she'd had of pleasure, the sureness of her touch. _Slytherin girls, of course. _And that in itself was interesting to contemplate, he'd thought, smirking. _Well, what do you think girls do, _she'd asked mockingly, without even opening her eyes, and he'd appreciated the speed with which she'd followed his chain of thought as much as he'd appreciated her lack of inhibition. Later that night, he'd asked her why she'd come to _him_, and the following conversation – about desire, dreams and riddles – had been much more than he'd expected. She'd Seen the birth of the _Heir_ – even if she was unable to understand the details – and she knew that both she and Octavius had a part to play. The Heir – the fulfillment of a thousand-year wait, what most people thought of as legend, myth. He wondered, now, if she'd known just what it would cost her, cost them both. He wondered if it would have mattered. 

Because, and this was important – desire, or love, even – was double edged. A blessing and a curse, both. They'd neither of them slept, that night.

He thought of all this, and more, in the time it took to take a series of swift steps towards her, to slip off his robes, to note the fine lines around her eyes, to bend over and kiss her, lightly, reverently. To note that her lips, despite her marbled, chill appearance, were warm, and very much alive, and the pale arms that slipped around him were not the arms of a wraith. She wasn't as fragile as he'd thought, but although she kissed him back with increasing ardour, wrapped her legs around him and let him lose himself in her, he became aware of a certain – restraint – in her pleasure. She did not give herself fully, and he felt sure that there was a warning here, some significance. And he knew that he did not want to hear this, not now. And although she was fond of white, her hair was red as ferns and her soul was fire – _he_ was the one who was silver, like ice and steel, and with that thought in mind he pulled away from her. Rolled onto his side, to pick his discarded robes from the floor, with only one aim – to get away before she could confirm his fears. 

"You're not staying?" 

"I have promises to keep," he lied, "and miles to go before I sleep. I can't stay."

"Does _he_ need you?"

There it was, almost unnoticeable to anyone other than Octavius – and he only caught it because of his already heightened awareness of her, of her mortality, of the sacrifices they'd made for the boy. A trace – very faint – of bitterness in her voice. Of loss, perhaps. And of course, she was justified, she wasn't a Malfoy, wasn't bound by obligations to the boy – but _Octavius_ was, and Elspeth was bound to him.

"_Need_?" he said. "No. Never that." 

It was hard to imagine Styliane's son _needing_ anyone. He was perhaps one of the most independent people Octavius had ever encountered. It was fiercely ironic, he thought, that Riddle's self-control was probably the legacy of his absent father. His absent _Muggle _father. Because Styliane, to be perfectly honest, hadn't been the most balanced of people. There was a strong streak of insanity amongst members of the oldest wizarding families – although Octavius' own family had taken precautions to avoid such afflictions – and Styliane, well. Octavius was well aware of his romantic streak – but he'd never, ever known anyone as quintessentially _tragic_ as the daughter of Julius Marvolo Zalaras. It was fiercely ironic indeed. Had Riddle been a pureblood, it was quite likely that he'd have been hopeless. Worse than a Squib. Lost, victim to the dizzy spells, and all-consuming delusions that were the result of an exceptionally high concentration of magic in the bloodline. Fitting, though, that Slytherin's Heir should owe his sanity to his Muggle father – the Zalaras Riddle worked on many levels, and had been seen so clearly by Salazar a thousand years ago. The Founder had wanted his Heir to experience Muggles firsthand. To see what they were capable of. Only someone brought up as Tom Riddle had been brought up would be able to hate so purely, without discrimination. _Know thy enemy_. The boy had said that, last year, during that business with the Chamber. Although Marcus had been Riddle's co-conspirator in that affair, having been duly informed of the boy's status, and although Marcus had assumed many of Octavius' responsibilities – as dueling partner for the boy, and companion, Octavius would never relinquish his role as Riddle's mentor. It had been almost eerie, seeing the boy at his Sorting Ceremony. But satisfying to pass on his hard-earned knowledge to someone so obviously eager to learn, and very, very tempting – especially now the boy was old enough – to teach him _other_ things. However, the wary look in the turquoise eyes that were the trademark of the Zalaras family had warned Octavius away. He was fairly certain as to what had gone on in the boy's orphanage, and equally certain that, in time, the boy would exact an appropriate revenge. Styliane had always had a sense of _poetry_, after all. 

"Then stay," Elspeth said, and he caught the underlying tension in her voice far more clearly this time. 

__

Something is wrong, he thought, and felt a flicker of fear in his belly. He wasn't a superstitious man, but this woman, his lover, had taught him to respect the power of omens. The strands of their own fates had tangled in a love-knot, a small part of their larger destinies, perhaps, but impossible to unravel. Because of her, he had never married. Because of her, because he always _knew_ she'd die first although he never dared to give shape to this deeply buried thought until now – he'd sought pleasure in countless others, both male and female, searching for someone – anyone – who could take her place once she was gone – 

"What is it?" he asked, already knowing her answer as he let his robes drop back to the floor.

– a fool's errand, never vocalized but instinctive. _Think and die_. She burned in his blood, an ever-constant presence, since he was sixteen. A shelter, just the thought of her, during his long, hard years abroad, the lady in her tower. The Haven. _What's in a name? Everything_. Her family had taken their name from the lighthouse in which they lived, alone, dreaming and weaving and spinning stories for the future. His story, her story, inevitable, woven long ago. _The boy's story, too_.

She looked at him, an eyebrow raised. She knew he knew, of course, because she was all artifice. Her pose had been carefully designed to elicit his earlier response – to make the thought of her death real to him. She _wasn't_ the romantic type, and she knew him better than anyone. _Wouldn't Seraphim laugh if he knew_, Octavius thought, incongruously.

And then she told him. 

Strangely, his first thoughts were of Styliane, dead these past seventeen years come Christmas. Or perhaps it wasn't so strange, considering the persistence of memory, the way the past always, always caught up with the present. She was still very much alive in the eyes and mouth of her son. She'd been the first and last person to tell him, quite calmly, that she was going to die.

__

Until now.

And Octavius had his own defences, carefully constructed mental barriers, and his thoughts veered away from the red haired woman standing before him, away from her cool, almost indifferent words, spinning back in time, back to his last meeting with Styliane.

__

Her hands had been trembling, uncontrollably, but at first he'd put that down to her fondness for pink wine. They'd sat, facing each other, in the Three Broomsticks, her eyes wild and terrible as she looked at him, beyond any hope of salvation. He was eighteen. She was older, married by then, of course. Her final act of rebellion, Octavius had thought, against a father who'd died much earlier, and would never know.

"It's over," she'd said, her hands shaking as she lifted her glass, took a sip, replaced it.

"What is?"

"Everything," she replied, and laughed. Her cheeks were flushed and her laughter had a very sharp edge to it. He wondered how much she'd had to drink before he'd arrived. He hadn't seen her for some time – but she hadn't been quite this melodramatic back at school. "So, who are you fucking nowadays, Octavius?" she said, throwing the words at him as though they were knives. "Anyone I know?"

He'd been slightly surprised by her suddenly aggressive demeanour. "As it happens, you do. She's in the year below me – the Haven. Elspeth."

"Red haired girl?" Styliane asked, after a moment's thought. "You're still _with her?"_

He nodded. 

"How touching," she'd said without enthusiasm. "Does she know anything? Or is she just an exceptional fuck?"

She'd emphasized the last word heavily, as though trying to shock him with her coarseness, then she'd drained her glass. It was then that he'd noticed she wasn't wearing her wedding ring.

"She knows enough," he replied calmly, looking at her hands.

Styliane followed his gaze, and smiled. "I did_ say it was over."_

"You've left him?" 

"You – could say that," she said, and laughed again. Shrill laughter that grated on his nerves and spiraled upwards uncontrollably. It made him acutely uncomfortable – and he noticed several people turning to look at her, at them. Some he knew from school, unfortunately, as possessing big mouths and little brains.

"Stop it," he'd hissed at Styliane, and had stared coldly at Anita Skeeter until the stupid bitch had turned back to her meal. "What's happened? Are you –"

"Oh, you needn't worry," she replied, bitterly. Suddenly, shocking sober. "Tom's served his purpose."

"You're pregnant." With the Heir_, he'd finished silently. So Elspeth's vision was about to become a reality. And the seal was set on his own individual fate, too. "Should you be drinking, then?"_

She'd just looked at him, her eyes full of contempt. He wasn't sure whether her scorn was directed at him, or at herself. Or her husband. Or all of them. 

"Will you come back to us?" Back to our_ world, the world that you belong to._

"As I said," she murmured, shaking her head, "everything's_ over. This whole failed experiment. I said I'd never go back, and I meant it."_

"The Heir –"

"Will be brought up as necessary. By Muggles. As Salazar wanted," she said scathingly. "I know what they'll do to him."

"But what will you do?" he'd asked then, wondering just what had happened between the parents of the Heir. "Does he_ know?"_

She raised a shoulder in a shrug. It wasn't an answer. 

"You're not going back to him_?"_

"That's not possible," she said, smiling stiffly. "Tom's – less than fond of magic, you see. He_ told me to leave."_

He'd blinked at that, instantly furious at this man he'd never met. "That was somewhat unwise," Octavius said. "Considering you are what you are."

Her smile was cruel. But beautiful. "Oh, I gave him good reason to regret his decision before I left."

"I can imagine." And he could. It had been Styliane's grandfather, after all, who had helped Gesius Lott create the Killing Curse. "You didn't, did you?"

Styliane Riddle, née Zalaras, shook her head dismissively. "Cruciatus. Fifteen minutes. Kinder than childbirth, don't you think?"

"I'd have killed him," he said suddenly. This man, this Riddle – what right did he_ have to treat a witch so? The mother of the Heir?_

"All in good time," she said, and laughed again as she patted her stomach. "Little Tom can take care of him."

Elspeth had told him that Styliane would name the child Tom, but he raised his eyebrow anyway. "Oh?"

"He's going to be the death of me, too," she'd said then, and she'd been right. Because Tom Marvolo Riddle had clawed his way out of the womb two months early, on Christmas Day, and Styliane had not recovered. 

And now Elspeth. And this was worse. Unthinkably so.

"How long have you known?" he asked, his eyes following her as she walked over to where her fish swam in their glass bowl, vivid, glowing, _alive. _

"A few months," she replied quietly, dipping one hand into the fish-bowl to set the water rippling gently. "Since August."

He couldn't help himself. He could hear the frustration in his voice, and despised himself for it as he asked, "Why _tell_ me?" 

"You'd rather not know?" Elspeth asked, wearily. She wasn't looking at him, but at her damned fish as they circled endlessly. There was no anger in her voice, but he could see the tension in her shoulders. She'd never quite managed to mask her feelings completely, not from him, and although his fury wasn't directed at _her_, it was too much, this confirmation of the fear he'd had earlier_. She will die before me,_ he thought, and his fury was aimed at the heavens, gods, stars, everything.

"Yes," he said. He didn't know whether it was the truth. He didn't think so.

"I thought it would be better this way," she said. "Gods, Octavius, if it were _you_ I'd want to know–"

He could tell from the slight hitch in her voice that she was close to tears, and he wanted to tell her that she didn't need to explain herself to him, of all people, but something impelled him to continue. "How long have you got?" he asked coldly.

"_I don't know_," she snapped, which was good because anger was better than tears. Octavius did _not_ want to see Elspeth cry. Tears would only have provoked him to laughter in any other situation, with any other woman, or man, for that matter, but _her_ tears would render him helpless. "Most of my dreams are concerned with other things," she added. "The boy. The war. They're _never _specific."

__

The boy. Naked, Octavius left the warmth of their bed, her bed, and crossed over to where she was standing, her back to him. They'd been together, as a unit, a team, since they were children – but they'd been separated for such a long time. All because of the boy, for whom sacrifices were being made before he'd even started to talk. The boy, for whom he'd just spent close to ten years in Europe, gaining valuable knowledge, learning things he could never learn in England. Buying a few suitable properties close to the Black Forest, with money he'd earned by less-than-clean methods. He'd had to leave his lover as soon as he'd left Hogwarts, seeing her only when circumstances allowed – oh, they'd had Paris for two warm months of the following spring, but her health had not permitted long stays abroad and his work had not given him enough time to return home. They'd met sporadically. A few weeks in Berlin. They'd worn out half the owls in Europe whilst he'd been away. The unexpected month in Cséjthe, and to this day he's not _exactly_ sure what she was doing in Hungary, in the ancestral home of the Bathorys, although he has his suspicions. But then – he never told her what he was doing there either. There was mutual silence, mutual acceptance, and if the youngest son of Stefan Bathory had wondered at the sudden end to Octavius' idle pursuit of him, he'd never shown any signs of regret.

He'd come back for the boy, too, back to face his brother's deeply ironic speeches about family honour, duty – _everything_ Octavius has ever done has been for the good of the family, nothing, not even Elspeth, can take precedence over his duty – back to walk a fine line at Hogwarts, juggling a variety of seeming loyalties in order to take care of that which has been his family's blood-obligation since the Founders – the boy. The Heir. Elspeth dreamed his name, but only a Malfoy born could appreciate the perfection of Salazar's Riddle. Knowing what he did, he could no more deny his duty to the family and the Heir than he could slit his own throat. He had sacrificed valuable time with Elspeth, but losing her was the only thing that would _truly_ be a sacrifice. And all for the Heir of Slytherin. The worst thing was that Octavius could not find it in himself to wish he'd managed things differently – it would mean forfeiting his place in history, sacrifices had to be made for the cause, so to speak – but Elspeth was going to die and it seemed as though they'd had no time at all.

"Perhaps –" he began, then stopped, refusing to utter something so trite. Truth was white, and he owed it to her. _Perhaps you misunderstood your dream. Perhaps you were wrong_. It would be insulting. Her dreams were never wrong, it was as simple as that.

"Perhaps," she echoed. He could tell that she understood. She still wouldn't look at him, though, and he lay a tentative hand upon her shoulder. She was burning hot to the touch, burning from within, and her body was impossibly tense. "I'm sorry, then."

"No," he said, rejecting her apology, and more. "_No_."

"I'd want to know if it were you," she said softly, still watching her fish. "I'd want to be prepared."

He looked at her. Took in every inch of her, the way her hair hung around her shoulders, the way her fingers trailed in the water of the fishbowl, the way the candlelight sent flickering shadows over her skin. She looked very frail, suddenly, breakable, and it occurred to him that she had chosen this pose deliberately too, just to show him what it was that he'd lose. She was as manipulative as he was, in her own way.

"You were right." It wasn't a lie, he thought, realizing the truth in what she said. Better by far to be prepared, to make the most of everything that came before. And the future wasn't set in stone. They had prior warning. She may have been living on borrowed time, but he was quite prepared to steal more for her. "There are potions," he said, softly, referring to the many forbidden substances that helped prolong life. He wondered if she'd been using them already. The Bathorys knew a lot about stealing time.

She was still for a moment. "Yes," she said, although her voice was strangely lacking in conviction. "Potions."

"_Quintus_," said Octavius, his mind instantly running over the ramifications of this new variable. Quintus Snape could prove useful in a number of ways, not just for his skill at Potions. _His family, too_. "If his uncle won't help us, he will."

"For the right price," Elspeth agreed, turning to him. Her face was strained, but tearless; she was almost smiling, although her eyes were veiled. "Perhaps I _will_ take that other lover after all." 

"A cold bed," he said, remembering the conversation they'd had the night of his return to England, seven years ago. 

__

"So, the prodigal returns," his lover, his haven had said, in between kisses. Her green eyes were wide, luminous with the desire that he knew she had no intention of concealing. She knew the effect it had on him, to see her need for him. Ever since their first night – she_ had approached him. So she knew from experience, and she wore white when they were alone. Innocence and experience, purity and passion. These things were one in her, and this appealed to the poet in him._ She makes hungry where most she satisfies_, he thought, and felt his own desire stirring. They were together, on the highest floor of her family's lighthouse home, and she truly was his haven. She steers me safely into port, he thought, unable to resist the double entendre. He is still very much the man he's reputed to be, after all._

"And he never will play the wild rover no more," Octavius replied, brushing her shoulders and neck with his lips, allowing the tip of his tongue to dart across her soft skin. She smelt of jasmine. "If his lady will welcome him home, that is." It had been too long, truly.

"But his lady is tired," Elspeth had said, half-laughing as she pushed him away. She raised herself, so that she was leaning back on her elbows. It was an artificial pose, her red hair falling loose around her shoulders, slightly tangled, the way he liked it best. "And her feelings are hurt."

"Did I do something to displease you?" he asked, toying with the straps of her nightdress, unfastening the top button. "And would you like me to do it again?"

"You were away too long," she'd said, allowing him to lower himself onto the bed beside her, allowing him to kiss her throat, allowing him to slip a hand inside her nightdress. "Is it so inconceivable that your lady might have taken a new lover? And yet… you expect a welcome_… impertinent, I call it, and over familiar…"_

"Have_ you?" he'd asked, pressing closer to her, luxuriating in the feel and scent and taste of her. He'd always wondered what she did for satisfaction whilst he was away – the Sight brought very strong urges as he knew from experience – but it seemed rather crude to actually _ask_. Her sister Seer, Edith, the girl he'd never met, lived in the rooms on the lower floors of the lighthouse – he'd had decidedly lascivious thoughts regarding the two siblings but was aware that Elspeth might not take kindly to hearing about them. Slytherin girls were all very well – but there were limits._

She'd laughed, and shifted slightly. "If you'd been away for longer, I might have done. I'd selected a possible replacement."

"Do I know him?" Octavius had asked, and then with a flash of amusement, "Have I had_ him?"_

"I doubt it," she said, her voice husky as he finished unbuttoning her nightdress. "You weren't that close to Julius, surely."

He paused, his hand on her breast. "That's … somewhat disturbing," he said. "Not the incest, although I'd prefer to leave that to the Lestranges – surely my brother hasn't given you any indication of interest?"

"No," she admitted. "He's got morals_."_

Octavius smiled at that, kissed her lightly, then sat up to remove his shirt. "Only where marriage is concerned, oddly enough," he said. "He'd never touch you."

"Pity," she said, her eyes glinting as she unfastened his trousers, "but there's always Valerius…"

"Frigid," Octavius said promptly, kicking off his trousers as elegantly as possible. He rolled over, to cover her body with his. This_, he thought, feeling her warm and willing beneath him_, is a proper home-coming, and Julius will just have to wait until tomorrow._ "All the Snapes are," he'd added, sliding a hand down past her stomach, between her thighs. Just her sharp, indrawn breath then had pleased him more than any of the wails, moans, and screams he'd had from others, any virgin's sigh._

"Speaking from experience?" she asked, somewhat breathlessly as his hand began to move more firmly. 

"It's why he's only got one son," Octavius replied, distracted. His body's own demands were becoming more insistent. "Tried it once, and didn't like it."

"That welcome," she said, ignoring what he'd just said, her face slightly flushed, her eyes smouldering, "take it, Octavius. And stop talking_." _

He didn't bother replying, but kissed his red haired Seer as though he could compensate for the long time they'd spent apart. She kissed back, and he stopped thinking. He'd learned quite a lot about the arts of love during his stay abroad, but his first night back with Elspeth was always simple. A release, almost pure, for the both of them. And, for a while, desire was written in silver and crimson, upon white sheets, in the double bed in the highest room of the lighthouse that winked at the Lindisfarne sky.

"They all are, without you," his red haired lover replied, her shoulders suddenly shaking in a choked, dry sob that was smothered as soon as possible. She knew he hated tears. Which was probably why she was crying, now. And so his arms were round her instantly, pulling her close to him, forsaking a language that did nothing to reassure. Touch was everything. He felt another harsh sob ripple through her. "_Octavius_," she said then, all barriers down. She was rare, precious, and his to comfort.

He couldn't think of anything to say, so he simply held her, stroking her hair, kissing her eyes, her lips, tasting her salt tears, in a silent grief that was not diminished by her increasingly frantic kisses as she drew him back to the bed, or what came after. When he began their quick and desperate dance of the flesh that night, he tried to pretend that he was filling her with his own life, his own vitality, and as she arched during what was itself another form of dying, her cry was just as despairing as his own. As though she knew the futility of his fantasy.

Afterwards, she lay in his arms, her face streaked with tears and her hair covering them both. "Perhaps," she said softly, "the stroke of death is as a lover's pinch."

"Which hurts, and is desired," he finished. It was an apology. From both of them. His favourite play; although he'd always preferred to cast himself as Caesar. He'd lent it to the boy, who really _was_ a Caesar, some time ago, and the boy had seemed equally entranced. It was hard to tell. Although Octavius had been named for the shrewd politician, he'd spent his life cultivating the image of a libertine, a playboy, an Antony. Elspeth – she washis serpent of old Nile, his Cleopatra, and although he would never allow himself to forget his duty, the boy, the Heir, for her he would willingly rip the stars down from the sky. And she knew that. And she'd counted on it. And he – he loved her for it. For knowing him as she did. "We're not yet for the dark, my lady."

They lay on rose petals. And pure, pure white sheets. "No?" she murmured, her eyes meeting his, with an odd expression in their steady green depths that he could not place.

"Never," he replied, with an assurance he did not feel. Truth was white, honesty was white – but then there were white lies, too. He didn't know which of these concepts was most applicable to what he said next, but he knew full well he didn't _care _what he had to do to make it the truth. "We'll fly from death, my lady, hand in hand, and if needs be, we'll warm Snape's bed together."

She lay still for a long moment, looking at him. Knowing what was left unsaid. "Yes," she said, and smiled. She _was_ the better liar.

__

……Stay for me;

Where souls do couch on flowers, we'll hand in hand

And with our sprightly port make the ghosts gaze.

Dido and her Aeneas shall want troops,

And all the haunt be ours.(Antony and Cleopatra: IV.XIV.50-54)


End file.
